Vance Offers an Opinion
(Saturday, June 15; 2 p.m.)
We sat for a while smoking in silence, Vance gazing lazily out into
Madison Square, Markham frowning deeply at the faded oil portrait of
old Peter Stuyvesant that hung over the fireplace.
Presently Vance turned and contemplated the District Attorney with a
faintly sardonic smile.
“I say, Markham,” he drawled; “it has always been a source of
amazement to me how easily you investigators of crime are misled by
what you call clues. You find a footprint, or a parked automobile, or
a monogrammed handkerchief, and then dash off on a wild chase with
your eternal _Ecce signum!_ ’Pon my word, it’s as if you chaps were
all under the spell of shillin’ shockers. Won’t you ever learn that
crimes can’t be solved by deductions based merely on material clues
and circumst’ntial evidence?”
I think Markham was as much surprised as I at this sudden criticism;
yet we both knew Vance well enough to realize that, despite his placid
and almost flippant tone, there was a serious purpose behind his
words.
“Would you advocate ignoring all the tangible evidence of a crime?”
asked Markham, a bit patronizingly.
“Most emphatically,” Vance declared calmly. “It’s not only worthless
but dangerous. . . . The great trouble with you chaps, d’ ye see, is
that you approach every crime with a fixed and unshakable assumption
that the criminal is either half-witted or a colossal bungler. I say,
has it never by any chance occurred to you that if a detective could
see a clue, the criminal would also have seen it, and would either
have concealed it or disguised it, if he had not wanted it found? And
have you never paused to consider that anyone clever enough to plan
and execute a successful crime these days, is, _ipso facto_, clever
enough to manufacture whatever clues suit his purpose? Your detective
seems wholly unwilling to admit that the surface appearance of a crime
may be delib’rately deceptive, or that the clues may have been planted
for the def’nite purpose of misleading him.”
“I’m afraid,” Markham pointed out, with an air of indulgent irony,
“that we’d convict very few criminals if we were to ignore all
indicatory evidence, cogent circumstances and irresistible
inferences. . . . As a rule, you know, crimes are not witnessed by
outsiders.”
“That’s your fundamental error, don’t y’ know,” Vance observed
impassively. “Every crime is witnessed by outsiders, just as is every
work of art. The fact that no one sees the criminal, or the artist,
actu’lly at work, is wholly incons’quential. The modern investigator
of crime would doubtless refuse to believe that Rubens painted the
_Descent from the Cross_ in the Cathedral at Antwerp if there was
sufficient circumst’ntial evidence to indicate that he had been away
on diplomatic business, for instance, at the time it was painted. And
yet, my dear fellow, such a conclusion would be prepost’rous. Even if
the inf’rences to the contr’ry were so irresistible as to be legally
overpowering, the picture itself would prove conclusively that Rubens
did paint it. Why? For the simple reason, d’ ye see, that no one but
Rubens could have painted it. It bears the indelible imprint of his
personality and genius—and his alone.”
“I’m not an æsthetician,” Markham reminded him, a trifle testily. “I’m
merely a practical lawyer, and when it comes to determining the
authorship of a crime, I prefer tangible evidence to metaphysical
hypotheses.”
“Your pref’rence, my dear fellow,” Vance returned blandly, “will
inev’tably involve you in all manner of embarrassing errors.”
He slowly lit another cigarette, and blew a wreath of smoke toward the
ceiling.
“Consider, for example, your conclusions in the present murder case,”
he went on, in his emotionless drawl. “You are laboring under the
grave misconception that you know the person who prob’bly killed the
unspeakable Benson. You admitted as much to the Major; and you told
him you had nearly enough evidence to ask for an indictment. No doubt,
you do possess a number of what the learned Solons of to-day regard as
convincing clues. But the truth is, don’t y’ know, you haven’t your
eye on the guilty person at all. You’re about to bedevil some poor
girl who had nothing whatever to do with the crime.”
Markham swung about sharply.
“So!” he retorted. “I’m about to bedevil an innocent person, eh? Since
my assistants and I are the only ones who happen to know what evidence
we hold against her, perhaps you will explain by what occult process
you acquired your knowledge of this person’s innocence.”
“It’s quite simple, y’ know,” Vance replied, with a quizzical twitch
of the lips. “You haven’t your eye on the murderer for the reason that
the person who committed this particular crime was sufficiently shrewd
and perspicacious to see to it that no evidence which you or the
police were likely to find, would even remotely indicate his guilt.”
He had spoken with the easy assurance of one who enunciates an obvious
fact—a fact which permits of no argument.
Markham gave a disdainful laugh.
“No law-breaker,” he asserted oracularly, “is shrewd enough to see all
contingencies. Even the most trivial event has so many intimately
related and serrated points of contact with other events which precede
and follow, that it is a known fact that every criminal—however long
and carefully he may plan—leaves some loose end to his preparations,
which in the end betrays him.”
“A known fact?” Vance repeated. “No, my dear fellow—merely a
conventional superstition, based on the childish idea of an
implacable, avenging Nemesis. I can see how this esoteric notion of
the inev’tability of divine punishment would appeal to the popular
imagination, like fortune-telling and Ouija boards, don’t y’ know;
but—my word!—it desolates me to think that you, old chap, would give
credence to such mystical moonshine.”
“Don’t let it spoil your entire day,” said Markham acridly.
“Regard the unsolved, or successful, crimes that are taking place
every day,” Vance continued, disregarding the other’s irony, “—crimes
which completely baffle the best detectives in the business, what? The
fact is, the only crimes that are ever solved are those planned by
stupid people. That’s why, whenever a man of even mod’rate sagacity
decides to commit a crime, he accomplishes it with but little
diff’culty, and fortified with the pos’tive assurance of his immunity
to discovery.”
“Undetected crimes,” scornfully submitted Markham, “result, in the
main, from official bad luck—not from superior criminal cleverness.”
“Bad luck”—Vance’s voice was almost dulcet—“is merely a defensive and
self-consoling synonym for inefficiency. A man with ingenuity and
brains is not harassed by bad luck. . . . No, Markham old dear;
unsolved crimes are simply crimes which have been intelligently
planned and executed. And, d’ ye see, it happens that the Benson
murder falls into that categ’ry. Therefore, when, after a few hours’
investigation, you say you’re pretty sure who committed it, you must
pardon me if I take issue with you.”
He paused and took a few meditative puffs on his cigarette.
“The factitious and casuistic methods of deduction you chaps pursue
are apt to lead almost anywhere. In proof of which assertion I point
triumphantly to the unfortunate young lady whose liberty you are now
plotting to take away.”
Markham, who had been hiding his resentment behind a smile of tolerant
contempt, now turned on Vance and fairly glowered.
“It so happens—and I’m speaking _ex cathedra_—” he proclaimed
defiantly, “that I come pretty near having the goods on your
‘unfortunate young lady’.”
Vance was unmoved.
“And yet, y’ know,” he observed drily, “no woman could possibly have
done it.”
I could see that Markham was furious. When he spoke he almost
spluttered.
“A woman couldn’t have done it, eh—no matter what the evidence?”
“Quite so,” Vance rejoined placidly: “not if she herself swore to it
and produced a tome of what you scions of the law term, rather
pompously, incontrovertible evidence.”
“Ah!” There was no mistaking the sarcasm of Markham’s tone. “I am to
understand then that you even regard confessions as valueless?”
“Yes, my dear Justinian,” the other responded, with an air of
complacency; “I would have you understand precisely that. Indeed, they
are worse than valueless—they’re downright misleading. The fact that
occasionally they may prove to be correct—like woman’s prepost’rously
overrated intuition—renders them just so much more unreliable.”
Markham grunted disdainfully.
“Why should any person confess something to his detriment unless he
felt that the truth had been found out, or was likely to be found
out?”
“’Pon my word, Markham, you astound me! Permit me to murmur,
_privatissime et gratis_, into your innocent ear that there are many
other presumable motives for confessing. A confession may be the
result of fear, or duress, or expediency, or mother-love, or chivalry,
or what the psycho-analysts call the inferiority complex, or
delusions, or a mistaken sense of duty, or a perverted egotism, or
sheer vanity, or any other of a hundred causes. Confessions are the
most treach’rous and unreliable of all forms of evidence; and even the
silly and unscientific law repudiates them in murder cases unless
substantiated by other evidence.”
“You are eloquent; you wring me,” said Markham. “But if the law threw
out all confessions and ignored all material clues, as you appear to
advise, then society might as well close down all its courts and scrap
all its jails.”
“A typical _non sequitur_ of legal logic,” Vance replied.
“But how would you convict the guilty, may I ask?”
“There is one infallible method of determining human guilt and
responsibility,” Vance explained; “but as yet the police are as
blissfully unaware of its possibilities as they are ignorant of its
operations. The truth can be learned only by an analysis of the
psychological factors of a crime, and an application of them to the
individual. The only real clues are psychological—not material. Your
truly profound art expert, for instance, does not judge and
authenticate pictures by an inspection of the underpainting and a
chemical analysis of the pigments, but by studying the creative
personality revealed in the picture’s conception and execution. He
asks himself: Does this work of art embody the qualities of form and
technique and mental attitude that made up the genius—namely, the
personality—of Rubens, or Michelangelo, or Veronese, or Titian, or
Tintoretto, or whoever may be the artist to whom the work has been
tentatively credited.”
“My mind is, I fear,” Markham confessed, “still sufficiently primitive
to be impressed by vulgar facts; and in the present
instance—unfortunately for your most original and artistic analogy—I
possess quite an array of such facts, all of which indicate that a
certain young woman is the—shall we say?—creator of the criminal
_opus_ entitled _The Murder of Alvin Benson_.”
Vance shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly.
“Would you mind telling me—in confidence, of course—what these facts
are?”
“Certainly not,” Markham acceded. “_Imprimis_: the lady was in the
house at the time the shot was fired.”
Vance affected incredibility.
“Eh—my word! She was actu’lly there? Most extr’ordin’ry!”
“The evidence of her presence is unassailable,” pursued Markham. “As
you know, the gloves she wore at dinner, and the hand-bag she carried
with her, were both found on the mantel in Benson’s living-room.”
“Oh!” murmured Vance, with a faintly deprecating smile. “It was not
the lady, then, but her gloves and bag which were present,—a minute
and unimportant distinction, no doubt, from the legal point of
view. . . . Still,” he added, “I deplore the inability of my layman’s
untutored mind to accept the two conditions as identical. My trousers
are at the dry-cleaners; therefore, I am at the dry-cleaners, what?”
Markham turned on him with considerable warmth.
“Does it mean nothing in the way of evidence, even to your layman’s
mind, that a woman’s intimate and necessary articles, which she has
carried throughout the evening, are found in her escort’s quarters the
following morning?”
“In admitting that it does not,” Vance acknowledged quietly, “I no
doubt expose a legal perception lamentably inefficient.”
“But since the lady certainly wouldn’t have carried these particular
objects during the afternoon, and since she couldn’t have called at
the house that evening during Benson’s absence without the housekeeper
knowing it, how, may one ask, did these articles happen to be there
the next morning if she herself did not take them there late that
night?”
“’Pon my word, I haven’t the slightest notion,” Vance rejoined. “The
lady herself could doubtless appease your curiosity. But there are any
number of possible explanations, y’ know. Our departed Chesterfield
might have brought them home in his coat pocket,—women are eternally
handing men all manner of gewgaws and bundles to carry for ’em, with
the cooing request: ‘Can you put this in your pocket for me?’ . . .
Then again, there is the possibility that the real murderer secured
them in some way, and placed them on the mantel delib’rately to
mislead the _polizei_. Women, don’t y’ know, never put their
belongings in such neat, out-of-the-way places as mantels and
hat-racks. They invariably throw them down on your fav’rite chair or
your center-table.”
“And, I suppose,” Markham interjected, “Benson also brought the lady’s
cigarette butts home in his pocket?”
“Stranger things have happened,” returned Vance equably; “though I
sha’n’t accuse him of it in this instance. . . . The cigarette butts
may, y’ know, be evidence of a previous _conversazione_.”
“Even your despised Heath,” Markham informed him, “had sufficient
intelligence to ascertain from the housekeeper that she sweeps out the
grate every morning.”
Vance sighed admiringly.
“You’re _so_ thorough, aren’t you? . . . But, I say, that can’t be, by
any chance, your only evidence against the lady?”
“By no means,” Markham assured him. “But, despite your superior
distrust, it’s good corroboratory evidence nevertheless.”
“I dare say,” Vance agreed, “—seeing with what frequency innocent
persons are condemned in our courts. . . . But tell me more.”
Markham proceeded with an air of quiet self-assurance.
“My man learned, first, that Benson dined alone with this woman at the
Marseilles, a little bohemian restaurant in West Fortieth Street;
secondly, that they quarrelled; and thirdly, that they departed at
midnight, entering a taxicab together. . . . Now, the murder was
committed at twelve-thirty; but since the lady lives on Riverside
Drive, in the Eighties, Benson couldn’t possibly have accompanied her
home—which obviously he would have done had he not taken her to his
own house—and returned by the time the shot was fired. But we have
further proof pointing to her being at Benson’s. My man learned, at
the woman’s apartment-house, that actually she did not get home until
shortly after one. Moreover, she was without her gloves and hand-bag,
and had to be let in to her rooms with a pass-key, because, as she
explained, she had lost hers. As you remember, we found the key in her
bag. And—to clinch the whole matter—the smoked cigarettes in the grate
corresponded to the one you found in her case.”
Markham paused to relight his cigar.
“So much for that particular evening,” he resumed. “As soon as I
learned the woman’s identity this morning, I put two more men to work
on her private life. Just as I was leaving the office this noon the
men ’phoned in their reports. They had learned that the woman has a
fiancé, a chap named Leacock, who was a captain in the army, and who
would be likely to own just such a gun as Benson was killed with.
Furthermore, this Captain Leacock lunched with the woman the day of
the murder and also called on her at her apartment the morning after.”
Markham leaned slightly forward, and his next words were emphasized by
the tapping of his fingers on the arm of the chair.
“As you see, we have the motive, the opportunity, and the means. . . .
Perhaps you will tell me now that I possess no incriminating
evidence.”
“My dear Markham,” Vance affirmed calmly, “you haven’t brought out a
single point which could not easily be explained away by any bright
school-boy.” He shook his head lugubriously. “And on such evidence
people are deprived of their life and liberty! ’Pon my word, you alarm
me. I tremble for my personal safety.”
Markham was nettled.
“Would you be so good as to point out, from your dizzy pinnacle of
sapience, the errors in my reasoning?”
“As far as I can see,” returned Vance evenly, “your particularization
concerning the lady is innocent of reasoning. You’ve simply taken
several unaffined facts, and jumped to a false conclusion. I happen to
know the conclusion is false because all the psychological indications
of the crime contradict it—that is to say, the only real evidence in
the case points unmistakably in another direction.”
He made a gesture of emphasis, and his tone assumed an unwonted
gravity.
“And if you arrest any woman for killing Alvin Benson, you will simply
be adding another crime—a crime of delib’rate and unpardonable
stupidity—to the one already committed. And between shooting a bounder
like Benson and ruining an innocent woman’s reputation, I’m inclined
to regard the latter as the more reprehensible.”
I could see a flash of resentment leap into Markham’s eyes; but he did
not take offense. Remember: these two men were close friends; and, for
all their divergency of nature, they understood and respected each
other. Their frankness—severe and even mordant at times—was, indeed, a
result of that respect.
There was a moment’s silence; then Markham forced a smile.
“You fill me with misgivings,” he averred mockingly; but, despite the
lightness of his tone, I felt that he was half in earnest. “However, I
hadn’t exactly planned to arrest the lady just yet.”
“You reveal commendable restraint,” Vance complimented him. “But I’m
sure you’ve already arranged to ballyrag the lady and perhaps trick
her into one or two of those contradictions so dear to every lawyer’s
heart,—just as if any nervous or high-strung person could help
indulging in apparent contradictions while being cross-questioned as a
suspect in a crime they had nothing to do with. . . . To ‘put ’em on
the grill’—a most accurate designation. So reminiscent of burning
people at the stake, what?”
“Well, I’m most certainly going to question her,” replied Markham
firmly, glancing at his watch. “And one of my men is escorting her to
the office in half an hour; so I must break up this most delightful
and edifying chat.”
“You really expect to learn something incriminating by interrogating
her?” asked Vance. “Y’ know, I’d jolly well like to witness your
humiliation. But I presume your heckling of suspects is a part of the
legal arcana.”
Markham had risen and turned toward the door, but at Vance’s words he
paused and appeared to deliberate.
“I can’t see any particular objection to your being present,” he said,
“if you really care to come.”
I think he had an idea that the humiliation of which the other had
spoken would prove to be Vance’s own; and soon we were in a taxicab
headed for the Criminal Courts Building.